LUMPENPROLETARIAT Project Censored invited onto the free speech airwaves today one of our favourite experts on news and political analysis of Rwanda and the African Continent, independent journalist, Ann Garrison, a friend of Lumpenproletariat.org. [1] Garrison discussed, with ProfessorEdward S. Herman, his book Enduring Lies, sussing out the actual history of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, which includes the imperialistic nature of the role of the USA, the EU, and their anti-democratic allies on the African Continent. [2] Garrison and Dr. Herman disabuse us of historical distortions promulgated by state propaganda, corporate/for-profit media, and misleading films, such as Hotel Rwanda.

Also, Ann Garrison covered recent flashpoints impacting Burundi, including the role of US officials, such as the USA’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power, in destabalising the African nation and undermining its national sovereignty, which would render it more vulnerable to western exploitation. [3] Listen (or download an mp3) here.

Messina

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[Transcript of Project Censored broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat.org]

PROJECT CENSORED—[1 JAN 2016] “Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio. I’m Mickey Huff with Peter Phillips. We wish you all a very happy New Year.

“Today, on the programme, we welcome guest host, independent journalist, Ann Garrison. Ann Garrison will speak to University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus Edward Herman, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, The Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide and the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later. They’ll discuss the gross distortions of what really happened in Rwanda, that have become a rallying cry to ‘stop the next Rwanda’.

“Ann Garrison also speaks to a Communication Adviser to the Burundian president about how that rallying cry is now deployed to advocate for invasion and regime change in Rwanda’s neighbour, Burundi. Please stay with us. (c. 1:23) []

ANN GARRISON: “Happy New Year; and welcome to the Project Censored show. Thanks to Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff for inviting me, Ann Garrison, to host.

“Today, we’re going to talk about regime change engineered by the US government and itsallies in east and central Africa. We’re going to talk about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the 1990s, and Burundi, today, where we’re still hoping for a better outcome.

“Aerial bombing campaigns make US wars for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria highly visible and absolutely undeniable. But the corporate and state press don’t describe US-sponsored as such, if they talk about them at all. Millions of African people have, nevertheless, lost their lives or seen their lives destroyed in US-sponsored wars for regime change and natural resources in Africa.

“For more than a year now, western policy makers and press have warned of a genocide in Burundi, like that of Rwanda in 1994, and called for a so-called humanitarian intervention to override Burundi’s national sovereignty and replace President Pierre Nkurunziza with a president more to their liking. They tell us that they are campaigning to stop genocide and mass atrocities, or, often, for short, ‘to stop the next Rwanda’, quote-unquote, which is what they told us when we went to war in Libya and Syria.

“One of the founding documents of humanitarian interventionist ideology is our UN Ambassador Samantha Power‘s “Bystanders to Genocide“, an essay decrying America’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide, which she expanded into her book, The Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

“Here with me to talk to me about this is University of Pennsylvania Emeritus Professor of Finance Edward S. Herman, co-author with Noam Chomsky of the classic Manufacturing Consent. Herman is also author of The Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: Rwanda and the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later.

“Welcome, Professor Ed Herman.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “I’m happy to be with you.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay; Professor Herman, could you start by telling us why you described the enduring lies about what really happened in Rwanda as ‘the greatest success of the propaganda system in the past two decades’?” (c. 4:40)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “In this book we described the fact that Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin.

“He invaded Rwanda in 1990 and carried out a war of conquest there, that ended some time in 1994.

“He invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1996 and went in and out of that area for years, killing, what the UN, itself, admitted was probably more than four million people.

“He runs a dictatorship in Rwanda where he gets 93% of the vote in a country where 90% of the people are Hutu and who consider him to be a conqueror, a terrorist leader. But he gets 93% of the vote.

“He’s considered, in the west, to be a hero, a savior. In The New Yorker, he was described as the Abraham Lincoln of Africa. For a man who has outdone Idi Amin, I think this is miraculous. The only way we can explain it is that he serves the ends of the United States. But it’s still a miracle that a man with that record can—in the free press of the United States—be considered a noble spirit.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. In other words, everything we’ve been told is wrong. And, I can say, that the enduring lies are so successful that that includes much of what has been broadcast on [our own] Pacifica Radio [network] and any number of left-liberal outlets. Any attempt to edit the Wikipedia entry on the Rwandan Genocide triggers so many edit alerts that it starts a Wiki editing war until the Wikipedia authorities declare a cease-fire with no changes made.

“That Wikipedia entry is all but written in stone.

“Now, can we just go through the chapter headings in your book, each of which addresses one of the enduring lies?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Yes, let’s do that.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. Since you’ve already given us some background and context, let’s start with chapter two, “The RPF invasion and low level aggressive war, that never was a civil war”. People who know the story of the Rwandan genocide only through the [2004] movie Hotel Rwanda are likely to think it was an explosion of tribal bloodletting, that began and ended in a hundred days’ time in 1994. Those who know it was actually the final hundred days of a four-year war are likely to believe that it was the end of a Rwandan Civil War. There is an entry in Wikipedia on the Rwandan Civil War. Why is this an enduring lie?” (c. 7:21)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, it turns out there was no major ethnic conflict in Rwanda back in late 1990.

“What happened in October 1990 was an invasion of armed forces from Uganda who [had] just received a group of Tutsi, of several thousand Tutsi soldiers, who were part of the Ugandan army. They entered. They pushed out the Hutu of their homes, several hundred thousand Hutu farmers in northern Rwanda. And they were pushed back. But they kept coming. And the United States and [mutual] allies gave them assistance.

“They put pressure on the Rwandan government to sign the Arusha Agreement in 1993, which gave the RPF a lot of power in Rwanda. But it also provided for an election to be held about 22 months in advance. And that election is something that the Rwandan, the RPF could not have won. They didn’t have to win that election because they carried out a war starting in April 1994. And, by the end of 1994, they’d conquered Rwanda.

“So, the whole period from October 1990 to August-September 1994 was a period in which the RPF was engaging in subversion, readying itself for a final war of conquest. So, it was a war. I would say this was a war.”

“Just for background here, Juvénal Habyarimana was the president of Rwanda from 1973 until he was assassinated in 1994, just before these elections were supposed to happen. It was a year before these elections were supposed to happen, if I remember.

“He was a Hutu, a member of Rwanda’s Hutu majority, who had overcome centuries of Tutsi subjugation with the independence in 1960. He died while returning home, along with Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, when his plane was shot out of the sky above Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. After four years of wars and massacres, which had driven a million Rwandans to the outskirts of Kigali, where they were encamped as internal refugees, this convinced the Hutu population that the Tutsi army was coming to kill or subjugate them all again and triggered Hutu massacres of Rwandan Tutsi.

“Now, the Rwandan government narrative is that Hutu extremists assassinated Habyarimana because he might have blocked their genocidal plans. What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “There’s no evidence of these genocidal plans. And the Hutu would’ve won the election that was forthcoming. It was foreclosed by the assassination and the conquest by Kagame.

“But we don’t have to just speculate about that. Actually, the Rwanda Tribunal had carried out an investigation of who shot the plane down back in 1996 and 1997. They appointed a 20-man group and carried out this study. And this group came up with a report in 1996 based on what they thought to be credible confessions by RPF people that Kagame had planned the assassination and carried it out.

“Well, when this report was presented to the prosecutor of the tribunal, he consulted the United States. And they cancelled the investigation. And from 1996 to the present, although the shoot down of this plane is widely thought to be the event, that triggered the genocide, the tribunal hasn’t looked into it. And the UN hasn’t looked into it beyond that.

“There’s lots of other evidence that the shoot down was carried out by Kagame. And it was logical, too; because he couldn’t win an election, he attained power by conquest. So, he shot the plane down.

“And another point that shows that he was the villain in the case is that when the plane was shot down April 6, 1994 his forces were ready and were in action within two hours of the shoot down, whereas the alleged plotters were completely bamboozled and confused and put up almost no resistance.

“So, anyway, the evidence is compelling that the shoot down was carried out by Kagame. And it’s logical. And it’s a proven fact.” (c. 12:02)

ANN GARRISON: “And, even whether you believe the evidence or not, Paul Kagame and his forces were the only ones who stood to gain by Habyarimana’s assassination and what happened afterwards. Right?”

“When Professor Allan Stam wrote to a UN official to ask how he estimated that the dead in Rwanda were 500,000, he responded that he couldn’t quite remember. The UN official responded that he couldn’t quite remember, but they knew they needed a really big number.

“The numbers that, eventually, came to be most widely accepted were that 800,000 to a millionTutsi and a few Hutu moderates, who tried to protect them, died at the hands of Hutu extremists. Why is this impossible?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, it’s impossible because the numbers of Tutsi in Rwanda back in 1994 was way under 800,000. In fact, the best figure one could come up with in those early years were based on the Rwandan Census of 1991, which gave the Tutsi numbers at about 590,000. So, if all of them were wiped out, it wouldn’t come anywhere near 800,000. But all of them weren’t wiped out. After the war, the best estimate, which is by a Tutsi survival group was that there are 400,000 Tutsi still there. So, then, let’s say there were 600,000 beforehand and afterwards there were 400-, that means 200,000 dead Tutsi. If there were 800,000 killed and 200,000 of them were Tutsi, 600,000 of them must have been Hutu. If it was a million, 800,000 of them must have been Hutu.

“And, in fact, it’s completely logical that the Hutu were the ones who were the greatest victims by number because this was an invasion by a Tutsi army. That Tutsi army wasn’t killing Tutsi. It was killing Hutus.

“So, in fact, I could conclude; and some others, Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, who did a very careful study of the killings in 1994, we come up with the conclusion that many more Hutus were killed than Tutsi. And my estimate would be that it is between two-to-one and five-to-one ratio, probably more like four-to-one is my best point estimate.” (c. 14:35)

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. And, just because this is a very sensitive subject, I just want to add that this was a tragedy for everyone in Rwanda. Hutus and Tutsis died.

“Now, let’s move on to Chapter Five: ‘The West’s Alleged ‘Failure to Intervene”. The story of the west’s failure to intervene to stop the Rwandan genocide has become the starting point of all the campaigns to go to war to ‘stop the next Rwanda’. What’s wrong with this story?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “What’s wrong with it is that the West was intervening from the very beginning. The West supported Kagame’s invasion in 1990. He was trained at Fort Leavenworth in the United States. And Britain pressed the Rwandan government to allow the RPF to penetrate and to bring armed forces into Rwanda.

“But Kagame, just before the shoot down of the plane in April 1996, just before that shoot down, the United States caused the UN to withdraw some of its troops. And that was an intervention, after the shoot down and the killings, the mass killings really started.

“The government of Rwanda called for cease fire repeatedly. But Kagame did not want it because he knew he could win. And that’s when the United States did not support any cease fire. And they recognised Kagame’s government after just three months of war.

“It’s absolutely untrue that the West failed to intervene. They did intervene. But they intervened to support the man who was engaging in this war of conquest in Rwanda.

ANN GARRISON: “Yeah. I think that really needs emphasis. People have been led to believe that the massacres started and Paul Kagame and his army moved in to stop them. What actually happened was that the massacres began and Paul Kagame resumed the war to win at all costs.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Yes. That’s true.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “In fact, one could say that all the dead people are collateral damage. The aim of the United States is to support Kagame’s taking over. And, if vast numbers of people were killed, that was a cost they were prepared to spend.

“But it doesn’t look good. So, we have to say: We failed to intervene. We failed to stop it. Well, in fact, we, not only, failed to stop it, we actually supported the mass killing.”

ANN GARRISON: “Yeah. Allan Stam, Professor Allan Stam has reported that the Pentagon estimated collateral damage of 250,000 people, a quarter million. It turned out to be closer to a million.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “[inaudible]”

ANN GARRISON: “Those are some pretty grim numbers. The Pentagon, according to Professor Allan Stam, estimated that the collateral damage for putting our guy, Kagame, in power, in Rwanda, would be 250,000 thousand lives. But it was closer to a million.

“Let’s take a breath, and a musical break. And we’ll be back shortly. [snip]” (c. 17:50)

“Now, the International Tribunal on Rwanda is hailed as a great triumph of international justice, mostly in the corporate and state press. What was it in fact?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “It did deliver a victor’s justice. That first part of that statement is, therefore, correct. [To say] it is a great triumph of international justice, is a complete fallacy because victor’s justice is not international justice. It is justice, as a kind of revenge.

“And, in fact, the ICTR served as a virtual arm of Kagame and the Rwandan state. It went after only Hutu. Although, as I’ve pointed out a while ago, the majority of killings were of Hutu in Rwanda. But the RPF could not be put to trial. And, of course, the shoot down; the tribunal found that the shoot down had been by Kagame’s forces; it cancelled any further investigation. That’s victor’s justice and a triumph of international injustice.”

ANN GARRISON: “They actually fired the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who had said that she was going to indict President Kagame for assassinating President Habyarimana.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “The prosecutor who dropped the case was Louise Arbour. But Carla Del Ponte actually did try, as you say, to go after some RPF people. She was not allowed to do it. She was fired a very short time after.

“The idea that Rwanda’s majority Hutu conspired to wipe out the Tutsi minority is central to the Rwandan government’s official narrative. What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Yes. This is true. The [entreat], the belief that there was a conspiracy to commit genocide is swallowed by the ICTR, It’s swallowed by Human Rights Watch. It’s swallowed by many, many commentators that there was a conspiracy to commit genocide.

“But the tribunal, itself, when it had come to grips with this, found it couldn’t find any such conspiracy. It did believe that there was a genocide. I mean, certainly, there was mass killing. But a conspiracy to commit genocide would have had to take place as a planned thing before the shoot down of the plane on April 6, 1994.

“And, so, when high level people of the Hutus were brought to trial, and there was an attempt to find that they actually had a plan, the tribunal couldn’t find it.

“In this book, we studied 15 top trials where there was an attempt to prove a conspiracy to commit genocide. In all 15, the tribunal found that there was no evidence for a conspiracy. There was killing. It was labelled to be genocide. But they could not find any pre-April 6th plan to commit genocide. But they rejected this argument.

“But the defenders, the apologists of Kagame, continue to talk about this conspiracy to commit genocide.”

ANN GARRISON: “Yeah. I’ve noticed that. The press doesn’t hesitate to repeat this, that there was a conspiracy before April sixth, even though no court at the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda convicted anyone of that crime.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “No. At the same time, I consider it a remarkable fact. It wipes out a lot of the claims of what happened in Rwanda.”

“This is the story that’s made him a celebrity in western capitols. What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, as I’ve been saying, Kagame, actually, started the genocide. He carried out the war. He refused to accept any cease fires during the killing period.

“And I’ve made the case, I make the case, that more people were killed by Kagame’s RPF than were killed by any Hutus. I think this is the inverse of the truth. He started a genocide. And, in fact, it never ended because after he’d won and conquered the country, he didn’t stop killing Hutus.

“And it was a short time lag he went in and tried to kill Hutu and do other things in the Congo, where vast numbers of Hutu are killed.

“I would argue that, insofar as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, it can be pasted up to the credit of Paul Kagame.

“But there was a second, bigger, genocide in the Congo. That was also Paul Kagame. He’s a double-genocidist. One could argue, too, that Bill Clinton was a partner in this. Bill Clinton’s, arguably, a genocidist.”

ANN GARRISON: “Yes. And one would hope that people might consider that in this upcoming election year. I know that people from this part of the world are very concerned about the likelihood of Hillary Clinton‘s election.

“Okay. Chapter Nine: ‘Africa’s World War’.

“Kagame’s alleged pursuit of ‘genocidaires’ in Zaire, which became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the death of millions. What’s wrong with Kagame’s claim that his troops and proxy militias were in [inaudible] Congo for nearly 20 years to hunt down the Hutu genocidaires guilty of killing Rwanda’s Tutsi in 1994?” (c. 25:48)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, one problem is there were no genocidaires. There were members of the Rwandan army, that had been beaten and dispersed. But they were not genocidaires. That’s baloney. And he knows who did the killing, namely, he himself with the forces.

“But, also, the army, that was in the Congo, they had had an all-Tutu army, was no longer a real force. It had been defeated. And these people were dispersed in the Congo. It did not constitute a real threat to Rwanda.

“So, this claim was, really, essentially, a big lie, that Kagame was using, with the support of the United States, to continue attacking in the Congo. Now, you couldn’t say: I’m going in to the Congo to exploit their rich resources. No, you have to have a better excuse. And, so, the excuse was: There was these people who had committed planned genocide in Rwanda; and I’m going in to the Congo after them, and for 20 years.

“I mean this is baloney. But it’s very effective.

“It’s one reason why the ICTR, the tribunal, and the continuous prosecution of Hutu in Rwanda played into Kagame’s hands. He could argue: Look, these people are being tried and convicted. These are people who committed genocide. And there’s some of them out there in the Congo. So, I must hunt down these evil criminals. It’s a wonderful propaganda gambit. And it was swallowed in the west. And he was not stopped.

“So, we’re dealing with here, really, mass killing. And, yet, no tribunal has ever been established to try anybody for these crimes, that tower over, even, what happened in Rwanda. Why is that? It’s because he’s a U.S. client and he serves the U.S. and British interests in this rich Republic of the Congo.” (c. 27:46)

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. Now, finally, the role of the UN, human rights groups, media, and intellectuals in promulgating all these enduring lies, otherwise known as ‘the standard model’, the official narrative of the Rwandan Genocide.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, the United States has been the superpower, as it dominated in what has happened in this area, in the Congo, and in Rwanda. The American people know almost nothing about the area. And, since the United States has a strong position of support for Kagame and for the invasion of the Congo, that dominated all the institutions, that were associated with it, the UN, where most of its reports were in support of the invasion. They swallowed the conspiracy to commit genocide line. They provided the tribunal. It’s true that they did have some reports, like these reports I mentioned, that talked about mass killing in the Congo. But they couldn’t avoid that because it was such an enormous volume of killing and millions of refugees. So, the UN had to confront it. And they had to speak a certain amount of truth.

“But, essentially, the UN supported the US position. Even during the Rwanda crisis in 1994, the UN did nothing while Kagame took a lot of military people right into Kagali. They let him get away with it.

“The human rights groups also did poorly. Human Rights Watch was an outrage from the beginning, following the standard line.

“The media [to] April 2014, the 20 advocates for the standard model were treated with great respect, great generosity, over 181 articles in the mainstream media. Of the 20 defenders of the standard model, there were a grand total of 17 articles; and most of them were in France. And most of these experts, that were dissenters, could never get into the mainstream media at all. And particularly terrible was the US and British media.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. Now that we’ve gone through the enduring lies, what similarities do you see between Rwanda in 1990 to 1994 and thereafter in the Congo. What’s happening in Burundi now?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, one very important similarity is that the United States and its allies are trying for regime change in Burundi, just as they did in Rwanda. They wanted to get rid of the Habyarimana government, the social democratic government, in Rwanda. They don’t like the social democratic government in Burundi. And they’re trying to get rid of it.

“Another thing is that they’re talking of an intervention there based on the fact that the head of state of Burundi has taken a third term, which is contested on a constitutional basis. But that the great powers should be upset about a third term, when they’re supporting Kagame, who is a dictator and who has his chief contestant in jail, and gets 93% of the vote, they swallow that and don’t bother him at all ahead of going after the Burundi state, which is, by comparison to Rwanda, a wonderful working democracy. And it is a social democracy.

“There’s also an intervention, more directly, in Burundi now. There’s strong effort. In fact, the Kagame government has been intervening in Burundi and trying to stir up agitation and stimulating killings, that will cause more tension and upheaval in Burundi. All this, this is all in preparation for further intervention to save the people from genocide. This has a familiar ring to it.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. On page 20 of your book [Enduring Lies], you write: ‘At the time’, meaning in the 1990s and in contrast to the crises in Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq today, ‘Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was a non-factor in the UN Security Council and a rubber stamp for the United States.’ Since you wrote that, Russia and China have begun to use their veto power. And, this year, they used it to keep the council’s western powers from passing resolutions to censure Burundi’s President Nkurunziza for seeking a third term in office or to approve humanitarian intervention to quote-unquote ‘stop genocide’. Nothing has yet come to a formal vote and veto. But the US and EU keep failing to get the language they want in resolutions passed.

“Most recently, the Security Council was asked to approve an intervention by 5,000 African Union troops. It responded, instead, that it welcomed contingency planning in case an intervention was needed, but without giving its approval. How do you think this might play out?” (c. 32:57)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “That’s a tough one. I’m just hoping that the Russians and the Chinese will stand firm and that this situation in Burundi will not deteriorate. If it does, if the destabilisation efforts of Kagame and, probably, the United States are successful and becomes increasingly violent, then it’s going to be tougher. The approval, that intervention from the African Union troops, I just hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s very hard to predict. But it’s an ominous situation.”

ANN GARRISON: “Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “Well, what I’d like to say is that this is an issue on Rwanda and the struggles there and the work of the ICTR. This is a very complicated issue with which people are not familiar. So, I would urge people to get this book, that we put out, which has a lot of details.

“But there are also some other really excellent books, that I would like to recommend. There’s a very good book called Justice Belied. And it’s a book about the international justice system. [Sébastien] Chartrand and [John] Philpot: Justice Belied. It’s a critical work on the workings of the international justice system. And many of the writers in it are people who are very familiar with Rwanda and the issues in Africa. And it’s even argued by some of the writers that the international justice system, as it’s now working, really makes it an arm of US foreign policy.”

ANN GARRISON: “Okay. And, here, I think we have to mention Robin Philpot’s book as well, Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction. And, also, the TIUC Toronto Taylor Report, which has kept the truth about this story alive for nearly two decades.

“Professor Ed Herman, thank you for speaking to the Project Censored show.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN: “It was a pleasure, Ann.”

ANN GARRISON: “Now, we’ll take a short musical break and, then, return to speak to Willy Nyamitwe, Communications Advisor to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza. He’s going to tell us how much damage our UN Adviser Samantha Power is doing in Burundi.” (c. 35:15)

[2] From Amazon.com, on Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 20, 2014)):

About the book: The Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been called the “fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. In 100 days, some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were murdered. The United States did almost nothing to try to stop it” (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, writing in 2002). In their book, Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Year Later (The Real News Books), Edward S. Herman and David Peterson challenge these beliefs. With sections devoted to “The ‘Rwandan Genocide’ by the Numbers,” the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front’s October 1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda and Paul Kagame’s ensuing 46-month war of conquest, the April 6, 1994 shoot-down of the Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana’s jet on its return to Kigali, universally regarded as the event that triggered the mass bloodshed which followed, the mythical Hutu “conspiracy to commit genocide” against the country’s minority Tutsi population, the West’s alleged “failure to intervene” to stop the killings, Kagame Power’s triumph in Rwanda and its spread to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, with a death toll running in the millions, and to the pernicious role played by the U.S., U.K., and Canadian governments, as well as by the United Nations, human rights groups, the media and intellectuals in promulgating a false history of 1994 Rwanda, the authors cross-examine what they call the “standard model” of the Rwandan genocide. “A brilliant dissection of the Western propaganda system on Rwanda,” writes Christopher Black, a Canadian attorney and the lead defense counsel before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

About the authors: Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979) and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2nd. Ed., 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago. Together they are the co-authors of The Politics of Genocide (Monthly Review Press, 2nd. Ed., 2011).

[3] From the KPFA.org audio archive page for Project Censored:

Rwanda, Burundi and Wars “To Stop the Next Rwanda”

Project Censored guest host Ann Garrison speaks to University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus Edward S. Herman, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, the Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later. They discuss the gross distortions of what really happened in Rwanda that have become a rallying cry for humanitarian war “to stop the next Rwanda.”

Ann Garrison also speaks with Willy Nyamitwe, Communications Advisor to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, about how that rallying cry is now deployed to advocate for invasion and regime change in Rwanda’s neighbor, Burundi.